J.Spin

It’s really interesting to hear it put this way. I sort of disagree with the first part, insofar as I find just about any mountain that combines relatively steep pitches, high-capacity lifts/skier traffic, and manmade snow, to be a recipe for horrible on-piste conditions. It’s not just Stowe that behaves that way, any high-capacity resort (eastern or western U.S.) suffers on that type of heavily-traveled snowmaking terrain unless it’s refreshed. The tough conditions can definitely be alleviated by natural snow, which makes a dramatic difference between places like Whiteface and Stowe – both of these are mountains with plenty of great, steep terrain, but Stowe getting roughly twice the amount of annual snowfall makes a big difference. The absolute diametrical opposite from the situation above would be Bolton’s Wilderness area, that I just described for jculligan the other day. There you’ve got lower-angle terrain, low capacity lifts or human-powered ascents, and zero snowmaking. That’s a recipe for great conditions, with Wilderness having the added bonus of being entirely above 2,000’, and having some of its lower slopes being very well protected from the wind. Your other point about Stowe being different when the off-piste opens up is appropriate though – that creates an entirely different world. I’ve done the calculations on Stowe’s actual acreage when you can ski everything, and the in-bounds terrain alone is roughly 2,600 acres. With the Hazelton Zone it goes to almost 2,800 acres, and then when the sidecountry (both sides of Mansfield, notch side of Spruce, etc.) is added you’re looking at something in the realm of 3,000 to 4,000 acres of lift-served skiing. They never advertise those numbers of course, but everyone who skis the mountain when the snow/base is good knows how massive/expansive the terrain is, even if they don’t know the exact numbers.

We’ve got a bit of snow starting to fall here at our site, and it may be coming from the WSW flow of moisture that seems to have been building on the local radar.

Event totals: 0.2” Snow/Trace L.E. We picked up another tenth of an inch of snow overnight, which I’m attributing to the same event as yesterday. We’ll see what happens over the course of today and tomorrow, but anything in this upcoming period will likely go into a different event/storm. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 25.5 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

Event totals: 0.1” Snow/Trace L.E. There was the occasional flake falling around midday today when I was outside, but they became a bit more consistent as the afternoon wore on, and I found a tenth of an inch of accumulation at 6:00 P.M. observations time. Reading the BTV NWS forecast discussion, there are a lot of factors mentioned that are currently at play in producing the weather the area is getting, including a stationary boundary dropping south, a weak elongated vorticity lobe in the 700 to 500 mb layer, Lake Ontario/low level moisture, an upper level trough, and embedded shortwaves. Some of those components might be responsible more for what’s taking place off to the north and west of us, so for here I’m going with the descriptor of “Shortwave in upper-level trough with low level/Lake Ontario moisture”. There’s technically a different shortwave associated with tomorrow’s snow potential, and then a cold front tomorrow night, so I’ll have to see if we get anything associated with those and if there are any obvious break points to distinguish them as separate events. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 23.5 F Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

Event totals: 0.3” Snow/0.02” L.E. The snow seems to have cleared out this morning, so I’d say that’s it for this event. The next potential system for the area appears to be in the Thursday/Friday timeframe. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: 0.02 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 10.0 Snow Density: 10.0% H2O Temperature: -6.3 F Sky: Partly Cloudy Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

Event totals: 0.1” Snow/Trace L.E. Today we had various periods of light snow, but flakes were small and a tenth of an inch of accumulation with a trace of L.E. was all we picked up. We’ve had a bit more potent snowfall this evening though, and it may be enhanced by a bit of moisture from Lake Champlain based on the comments in the BTV NWS forecast discussion. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 10.0 F Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

We hadn’t had any accumulation earlier, but we have with this streamer that just came down the I-89 corridor. Flakes are small, so it’s just a tenth of an inch, but we’ll see if any other streamers come through in this batch.

It’s been getting cloudier all morning and I’m starting to see some flakes here at our site, so it may be in association with that moisture that the radar shows coming in from the northwest:

Event totals: 0.5” Snow/0.14” L.E. It looks like the overnight accumulation marks the end of this storm, so the totals above should be the final numbers at our site for this one. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches New Liquid: 0.02 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 10.0 Snow Density: 10.0% H2O Temperature: 13.5 F Sky: Partly Cloudy Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

The temperature I'm currently seeing here is 33.4 F; I haven’t been following it too closely, but I did see it up around 35 F earlier today.

I was just returning some thawed snowboards outside and the precipitation seems to be mainly snow now in this area. The flakes are small – generally a mm or two.

Whoa… whoa… whoa… are you sure it’s good to push the storm out of here so quickly? Don’t you want the usual backside snows? I don’t think we’d want to miss out on that, and many of the models suggest there could be some.

Event totals: 0.3” Snow/0.12” L.E. The precipitation this morning has generally been sleet, but there’s certainly been some freezing rain as well that has promoted bonding of the sleet together into a frozen mass. It’s one of those days where coring the samples off the snowboards is really impractical, so the cores are best obtained by melting down the accumulation in the rain gauge outer cylinder. Scraping down the snowboards is likewise a huge amount of work, so it’s a day for the technique of putting fresh boards in place and melting down the accumulations from the previous round inside. Also of note is that this event has already brought more liquid equivalent than the 0.08” total suggested from the recent forecast, so it’s been more potent in that regard. Details from the 12:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.2 inches (sleet) New Liquid: 0.11 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 1.8 Snow Density: 55.0% H2O Temperature: 26.6 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

Event totals: 0.1” Snow/0.01” L.E. This morning on the boards I found a tenth of an inch of mixed precipitation, with the accumulation more due to sleet or granular components than any obvious flakes. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: 0.01 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 10.0 Snow Density: 10.0% H2O Temperature: 23.4 F Sky: Cloudy Snow at the stake: 5.0 inches

Earlier I’d checked on the totals that the Vermont ski areas have reported for the past couple of days, and the north to south listing is below. The northern resorts along the spine reported numbers in the 6-9” range, but I was surprised to see that there also appeared to be some decent accumulations in the Okemo to Pico stretch of the spine. Jay Peak: 7” Smuggler’s Notch: 6” Stowe: 9” Bolton Valley: 7” Mad River Glen: 2” Sugarbush: 3” Middlebury: 1” Pico: 5” Killington: 5” Okemo: 7” Bromley: 3” Magic Mountain: 3” Stratton: 2” Mount Snow: 4”

It continued to snow after my session at Bolton yesterday, and with the impressive conditions I found during the touring part of my trip, my wife and I decided to head up for some touring today. The recent rounds of snow have been great overall for the resort, and they’re reporting 7 inches of new in the past 48 hours. All the new snow is a bit of a mixed blessing with respect to touring on the Wilderness terrain though. In this morning’s snow report, it was already announced that a number of natural snow trails had been opened on Vista, so I assumed it was only a matter of time before ski patrol opened up lift-served access to the lower slopes of Wilderness. With temperatures hovering around 0 F in the early morning we waited until late morning to head up to the mountain to take advantage of warmer temperatures. While we were on our ascent we could see that the terrain was already getting rather tracked up, and indeed a big part of that was likely because patrol dropped more ropes, and lift-served skiers were coming over from Vista. The resort did have an associate checking passes at the base of the Wilderness Lift though, so they were enforcing the need to have your pass on you, even for touring. In terms of conditions, natural coverage is quite good on the lower slopes of Wilderness, as the trail openings would suggest. I’d say the depth of the powder was about the same as what I found yesterday - a couple more inches had been added with the additional snowfall, but there was probably a similar amount of settling. The snow was slower though today due to the colder temperatures, so that knocked the flow of the turns down a bit on the low-angle terrain of lower Wilderness. Although the Timberline Uphill Route isn’t open yet down at the 1,500’ elevation, the terrain there is actually looking pretty close to being ready for non-lift-served traffic based on what we saw as we passed by. Barring any major warming events, even a moderate storm would probably get that terrain in play for touring. A few shots from today’s outing:

Over here, our point forecast similarly suggests about an inch of snow, and the BTV NWS Event Total Snowfall map suggests roughly the same. Clicking through to the Hourly Weather Forecast Graph for the point forecast, it has 0.08” of liquid equivalent, with precipitation starting around 3:00 A.M. tonight and continuing through late tomorrow night. Unfortunately the BTV NWS forecast discussion doesn’t really speak to any thoughts on potential snow accumulations because they’re more focused on getting the details right for the potential warm air intrusion. It looks like they feel the 850 mb warm nose stays well south of here; it’s not a huge deal with a minor system like this, but any time the area stays north of potential mixing is a positive for maximizing snow quality on the local slopes: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 321 PM EST Sat Jan 8 2022 NEAR TERM /THROUGH SUNDAY NIGHT/... As of 321 PM EST Saturday…The main forecast challenge continues to be the strength of a warm nose around 850mb where the NAM and GFS remain steadfast in their respective thermal profile, the NAM being several degrees warmer around +5C as opposed to +1-2C on the GFS. Both agree that the warm nose won`t lift further north than central/southern Rutland/Windsor counties, but uncertainty remains on whether the dominant ptype will be sleet, freezing rain or a mix.

Ahh, great choice; we're always telling our students it's one of the best foundations for whichever medical/biomedical/biotech field people want to go into. An old biochemist I worked with out in Montana hailed it as "The queen of the sciences".

I'm a biochemistry professor, so meticulous data collection, measurement, analysis, etc. is definitely what we train to do. That's a perfect example - you using the observations/data from over here to get an idea of where things are headed in your area is literally a demonstration of the utility of accurate and consistent measurements. The fact that the various weather and climate services can use the data is of course even more impactful.

No, don’t worry. You just have to lighten up a bit and not get so aggravated with stuff – just have fun with it instead of taking things so seriously!

Yeah, Coastal always says he loves when J.Spin comes in and drops the hammer, but there are only so many opportunities, so you have to take advantage when he indicates that it’s time for a fresh one.

…said almost nobody in the entirety of the world …ever? Maybe it just sounds strange because of the way you wrote it. You probably meant to write something more straightforward like: “I’m some sort of snow-coveting weather weenie who is obsessed with amount of snow I have on the ground. I get irrationally aggravated when I fool myself into thinking I got more snow than I did from any given storm, and then I feel like less of a person when I try to compare my snow depths with surrounding locales in the region and my band of similarly snow-obsessed buddies.” Just be more precise with your language so that you don’t come off sounding like such a weirdo.

Event totals: 3.8” Snow/0.20” L.E. We’ve cleared out aside from a few clouds, so it looks like the totals above are the final values for Winter Storm Garrett here at our site, and it’s right in the 2-4” range that was in the forecast. At the tail end of the event, the flake size dropped, perhaps as the colder air moved in, and the snow density fell accordingly down to the 15 to 1 range from the 50 to 1 ratios that were present during the height of the upslope snow. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.3 inches New Liquid: 0.02 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 15.0 Snow Density: 6.7% H2O Temperature: 0.7 F Sky: Mostly Clear Snow at the stake: 6.0 inches

Event totals: 3.5” Snow/0.18” L.E. Details from the 8:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 1.5 inches New Liquid: 0.03 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 50.0 Snow Density: 2.0% H2O Temperature: 18.0 F Sky: Light Snow (1-3 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 6.5 inches

In terms of whether or not to wait another storm cycle, it will depend on the terrain pitch and level of variety you’re looking for. If a couple routes of green/low blue pitch with ~500 verts is enough, that terrain is good to go. Sufficient base is in place below whatever is currently falling, and the only remaining factor left on that terrain is water bars. Any water in them is frozen, and they are covered with snow, but they are not yet filled 100% up to grade with snow, so attention has be paid when approaching/crossing some of them. The Lower Turnpike trail (see the far left of the map below) is where the resort’s Wilderness Uphill Route is located, and it’s also the default descent route for folks that are just looking for a quick outing. It’s about as perfect a setup as you can get for earning turns when the snowpack is just getting going. It starts above 2,000’, it’s well protected from the wind, it’s pitch is low to prevent the scraping associated with the aggressive edging required on higher-angle terrain (folks in the Rockies would probably equate it to “Meadow Skipping”, if you’re familiar with the term), the snow is preserved well because it’s packed to a reasonable degree by skier traffic, and it literally starts right from the Bolton Valley Village for convenient access. The pitch is perfect for bottomless turns on 6”, and up to about 12” of champagne, or reasonably dry, sub 8-10% H2O powder (and ski width will play into it as well). Above those depths, or slightly lower if the snow is dense, you’ll start battling insufficient pitch for fun turns. One huge aspect of Lower Turnpike that people may not notice at first is the fact that while it’s low angle, it’s very consistent, so you’re not battling flat spots (a bigger deal for split boarders, but still a nice touch even for skiers). I remember talking with the former ski patrol director of the mountain, and he was a huge fan of Lower Turnpike indicating that it was actually one of the best trails on the mountain in that regard. For someone who is taking a first foray into skinning for turns in powder, Bolton’s Wilderness area, and specifically the Lower Turnpike trail, is just about the best place I can think of in the Northeast due to the combination of everything I mentioned above, and availability of fresh snowfall since it’s the Northern Greens. A big appeal for someone new to earning turns is the security of being in bounds, right on resort trails. So in that respect, it’s not really “backcountry” skiing, but an added plus as people advance is that one can easily access the resort’s backcountry network right next door using the same ascent route. The backcountry network begins right at the edge of the Wilderness Uphill Route shown on the map, and the details of that area are available on their backcountry network map. Just a few final notes about the Wilderness area – the pitch is roughly green to mild blue on the lower half to two-thirds of the mountain, and above that it gets up into higher blue and black pitches. The higher pitches are much more exposed to the wind, so they are easily scoured. A typical approach I use is to simply ascend as high as the snow quality allows. That’s a good approach if someone is uncomfortable with the skiing due to insufficient base. The bottom half of the Wilderness area is actually so well covered by natural snow that the resort will often open up lift accessed skiing there for skiers to connect over from Vista, long before they start running the Wilderness Chair. I’m not sure if they’re quite there yet, but they are definitely close, since I saw today that they’re starting to open natural terrain on the lower parts of Vista. With the way the snow continues to plow into the spine this evening, it’s definitely got me wondering how close they are. That’s just something to consider in terms of powder access because at that point, lift-served skiers will start to work their way over there as they discover it, and the powder on the lower half of Wilderness will see more traffic. If you have other questions about the setup, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help.